7/4/21

By Josh Rubin

Two questions hang in the air for me this July 4 morning. Two heartbreaking questions.

The first is about the child detention encampment at Fort Bliss, and other places like it. There are structural and systemic reasons for their existence. We create what are called unaccompanied minors with policies at the border that pry families apart.

But we learn, over and over, at other tent encampments in remote places, and now military bases, how much they damage the children. At Tornillo, Homestead, now at Fort Bliss. Each and every time, we hear about conditions that shock the sensibilities of anyone who pays attention. Mold, vermin, unvetted workers, boredom, sexual abuse, psychotropic drugs. And the consequences. Depression, trauma, suicidal and self-harming behavior. A lifetime of damage.

Yet, what we do is pile resources into fences and guards and secure facilities that add up to prison, and we shortchange the processes that would get these children to their families. So my question is this.

Why is Fort Bliss prison for children still open?

Question #2. We live in a disrupted world. There is much to say about the causes of that disruption, much that needs saying. But for now, the thing that haunts and pains the most is the way we keep people who are trying to survive this disruption from doing what they must to survive it. By moving from one place to another.

We concoct a line. It is called a border. Then we concoct a story. The story this time is about disease. It uses the pandemic we are living through to pretend that people who reach the line and wish to cross it threaten our safety, because of the disease. This is not a new story.

It is particularly applied to people of color. They are the ones that are subject to rapid expulsion, pushed back across that line, into camps of small tents and little food or care. Into great danger. And this, this, this, is what we do to people who pick up and move from where they can no longer live, to a place where, many tell us, we need them. And where, they feel, they will be able to survive.

This practice, this time, is called by the name of an obscure item in the health code. Title 42. It asserts a danger no respectable health expert concurs with, to carry out a policy of rank racism. Against our own interests. Tearing lives apart, in an age of disruption and displacement that will only get worse.

My question is: Why haven’t we suspended the disgrace of Title 42?